


you and me, we are meeting for the first time

by tanghali



Category: Leverage
Genre: AU (kind of), Alcohol warning, F/M, embedded animated gifs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-05
Updated: 2015-09-05
Packaged: 2018-04-19 02:44:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4729823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tanghali/pseuds/tanghali
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>If things were different, do you think we would still have gotten together?</i> It's late at night and Nate and Sophie are exceptionally tipsy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	you and me, we are meeting for the first time

**Author's Note:**

> Crossposted here on SamanthaFeng's gentle insistence that I archive my works. 
> 
> For [@lobelisa](http://twitter.com/lobelisa) who requested a romantic Nate/Sophie AU gifset on Tumblr. Yes, a gifset, you read that right. It's a strange mix of fic and gifs, and it's probably really confusing to read so quietly slink away now while you still can.

1.  
"In a different world," Nate begins, downing his tenth glass of whiskey, "do you think we would've still gotten together?"

Sophie puts her wine glass down and rests her chin on her hands, a light blush on her cheeks. (She's on her sixth.)

It was one of those nights. Nate had come by earlier, wanting to talk about their latest case. They had exchanged a couple of ideas for a while (she wanted to do a variant of the Murphy Game, and he wasn't satisfied with simply ripping off the mark) until he fell into one of his moods. The kind that kept him awake in front of Hardison's giant monitors in the headquarters, studying every minute detail until an answer came up.

"You're thinking too much," she'd said, taking his hand in hers and dragging him away from her sofa towards the dining table.

Nate's lips twitched upwards in response, and his free snaked its way around her waist.

"And what do you suggest we do?" he asked in a tone that betrayed exactly what it was he wanted her to be suggesting.

She rolled her eyes, shaking off his hand before picking up a bottle of wine from the cabinet. "Not tonight, Nate. I'm exhausted."

And she was. Between all the new students signing up and organizing Hamlet and running the theater and planning for cons, her life was more hectic than it had been in years. The largest source of her anxiety was standing a few feet away from her, searching the liquor cabinet for the bottle of whiskey she kept just for him.

He was planning something, Sophie knew that much. He always was. But he wouldn't talk about it, not yet, not to her, and that hurt more than she cared to admit.

Oblivious to her thoughts, Nate poured himself a shot before joining her at the table. "Want to talk about it?"

\--  


Now here they are, six, ten glasses of liquor later, and incredibly lightheaded. The papers concerning the case are strewn over her coffee table, long forgotten.  
  
"If I wasn't a grifter…" Sophie trails off, lost in thought. "I would have become an actress, I think."  
  
"And you," she continues after a beat, "you would've been a bloody priest!"  
  
Nate chuckles.  
  
"Not necessarily." His grin is wide and boyish, and he doesn't offer more of an explanation. "Though if I were a priest, Sophie the actress could still walk into my Church one day, and well…"  
  
When all of the implications of what he'd just said sink in, Sophie finds herself laughing. "You, are incorrigible!"  
  
Nate pours himself another shot as he waits for her laughter to die down.  
  
"Hear me out," he says finally, a half-smile still on his face when he raises her bottle of Pinot Noir. She shakes her head and tries not to smile at how silly they're being. But she drains the last of her wine anyway, and hands him her empty glass.  


  
  
  


2.  
"And what makes you think she would wait for him?"

Nate doesn't answer but fixes his gaze on her in a way that makes Sophie tilt her chin upwards mulishly.

The silence stretches, longer than what they're both comfortable with. Nate frowns and says, "Why does it have to be Nate the priest and Sophie the actress anyway? That's too complicated. What if one day, Nate—just Nate—and Sophie met somewhere—"

"Like in a bar?" she interrupts, smirking in the way Nate knows meant she's finally had more than enough to drink and not just acting like it.

He raises his glass in mock salute. "It's a good place as any."

  
  
  


  


3.  
"Figures," Nate mutters darkly as Sophie gets the last word. "It's always about the chase with you."

Sophie waves off his complaints with a hand. "A chance meeting at a café," she scoffs. "How… how…"

As she searches for the proper term to convey her distaste at the way Nate the detective and Sophie the art historian ended up, Nate prepares his own witty comeback. And because they are three and one and a half glasses drunker than they were three and one and a half glasses ago, the words don't quite line up, and Nate ends up saying, "Because hooking up with strangers is a literary masterpiece at a bar," even before Sophie manages to finish her thought.

There is a pause before Sophie snorts. "What?"

"I, I…" Nate rubs his temple, trying to remember why that sentence sounded wrong, and settles for remembering what the sentence actually was. "I'm drunk, that's what."

"So drunk," she agrees, words slurring, and empties her glass.

They're both quiet when they finish off the last of their wine. Sophie glances at the wall clock, surprised to find that it's 3AM. They've been talking for hours. Sophie's eyelids suddenly turn heavy as she realizes the lateness of the hour. Nate follows the line of her gaze, and drains his last shot.

"Let's go to sleep," he says, standing up. With a certain sobriety that Sophie can only admire, he puts their glasses in the sink without knocking into anything.

She hums in agreement but doesn't stand yet, not trusting herself to make it to her bed in one piece. Instead, she rests her chin on her hands and glances up at him from beneath her eyelashes. "If you had a chance," she says, "to rewrite your life like we just did…"

Nate is quiet, and the length of time it takes for him to reply is enough for Sophie to regret asking that question several times over. He's not looking her in the eyes, and she knows he's probably thinking about Maggie, about Sam, about all the things he could have had but didn't. When he finally answers, it's as if he's come from some place far away.

"No." Sophie releases a breath she didn't realize she had been holding. "I like it here. I like where I am now."

The finality in his tone makes her smile. "Good," she says. "Never trust the ramblings of two drunks."

This gets a chuckle out of him as he steps closer to her. "To be fair, we were very coherent drunks."

"You'll take that back in the morning." She's grinning openly now, feeling foolish because it really is unfair how he can look at her like that, like she's everything he's ever wanted, and not tell her what he's planning.

But they never played fair, either of them. She thinks of how she has yet to tell him about her past and how she doesn't want to. They're both unrepentant liars, too used to keeping secrets to ever really open up completely.

Nate looks at her as if he knows exactly what she's thinking. (He probably does.) He tilts her face upwards and kisses her. Sophie curls a hand around the nape of his neck, matches his kiss fiercely, hoping he can taste the promise unspoken on her lips. One day, they will be all right. For tonight, this admission—it is enough.

"Come on, let's go to bed." Nate tugs her up and she lands on his chest with a quiet 'oof.' "I don't think I've seen you drunk like this before."

"Tired," she says a tad defensively, struggling to keep awake.

Nate keeps a steady hand on her back as he guides her to the bedroom. She doesn't bother changing out of her sweats and just claims the right side of the bed, releasing a sigh when her head hits the pillow. Nate rummages around her closet and finds a shirt he hasn't seen in a week, and a pair of boxers he hasn't seen in two. Smiling slightly, he puts them on before joining her in bed.

"Good night," he murmurs, switching the lights off. Sophie mutters something indistinct as Nate wraps an arm around her waist, pulling her closer until he can bury his nose in the nape of her neck, breathing in her scent until he finally falls asleep.

_finite._


End file.
